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Researchers from Singapore, Japan, the UK and USA have discovered how soil bacteria carry out surprising chemistry, defying a longstanding set of chemical rules and thus paving the way for new synthesis of polyether drugs.

Principal investigator, Chu-Young Kim, Assistant Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences of the National University of Singapore (NUS) Faculty of Science, and his group have made use of powerful X-rays to decipher how antibiotic-producing bacteria defy a longstanding set of chemical rules.

In nature, how do host species survive parasite attacks? This has not been well understood, until now. A new mathematical model shows that when a host and its parasite each have multiple traits governing their interaction, the host has a unique evolutionary advantage that helps it survive.

The results are important because they might help explain how humans as well as plants and animals evolve to withstand parasite onslaught.

Researchers working at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have used powerful X-rays to help decipher how certain natural antibiotics defy a longstanding set of chemical rules – a mechanism that has baffled organic chemists for decades.

Scientists from PRBO Conservation Science and the Department of Fish and Game have completed an innovative study on the effects of climate change on bird species of greatest concern. This first-of-its-kind study prioritizes which species are most at risk and will help guide conservation measures in California. The study was published this week in the journal PLoS ONE.

Washington, D.C. -- Plant science is key to addressing the major challenges facing humanity in the 21st Century, according to Carnegie's David Ehrhardt and Wolf Frommer. In a Perspective published in The Plant Cell, the two researchers argue that the development of new technology is key to transforming plant biology in order to meet human needs.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Freshwater ecosystems in northern regions are home to significantly more species of water fleas than traditionally thought, adding to evidence that regions with vanishing waters contain unique animal life.

The new information on water fleas -- which are actually tiny crustaceans -- comes from a multi-year, international study that was published Feb. 24 in the journal Zootaxa.

The researchers scoured the globe seeking the creatures and found them inhabiting northern lakes and ponds in locations from Alaska to Russia to Scandinavia.

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 2, 2012 – Newly proposed asthma outcome measures will help standardize and improve results from the hundreds of millions of dollars the National Institutes of Health (NIH) spends annually to study asthma, according to the Merck Childhood Asthma Network, Inc. (MCAN), the nation's only organization focused solely on childhood asthma.

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- A scientific method paper and video by Loyola researchers has gone viral. The video demonstrates a laboratory technique used to study some aspects of mitochondrial dysfunctions in Alzheimer's disease and many other disorders.

It has been accessed by more than 14,000 scientists around the world since it was published in the Journal of Visualized Experiments, a peer-reviewed, PubMed-indexed journal that publishes biological and other scientific research in a video format.

A consortium of federal agencies and nongovernmental organizations has published a report proposing a set of common measures and data-collection methods for use in asthma clinical research.

Shark fins are worth more than other parts of the shark and are often removed from the body, which gets thrown back into the sea. To curtail this wasteful practice, many countries allow the fins to be landed detached from shark bodies, as long as their weight does not exceed five per cent of the total shark catch. New University of British Columbia research shows that this kind of legislation is too liberal.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers have discovered critical new details about the structure of a virus that causes potentially fatal brain swelling and paralysis in children, pointing toward designs for antiviral drugs to treat the disease.

The virus, called enterovirus 71, causes hand, foot and mouth disease, and is common throughout the world. Although that disease usually is not fatal, the virus has been reported to cause encephalitis, a potentially fatal illness found primarily in the Asia-Pacific region.

CHICAGO --- Maintaining a healthy lifestyle from young adulthood into your 40s is strongly associated with low cardiovascular disease risk in middle age, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study.

"The problem is few adults can maintain ideal cardiovascular health factors as they age," said Kiang Liu, first author of the study. "Many middle-aged adults develop unhealthy diets, gain weight and aren't as physically active. Such lifestyles, of course, lead to high blood pressure and cholesterol, diabetes and elevated cardiovascular risk."

Cases in which a newly approved drug is more effective than the cheaper alternatives already available are the exceptions rather than the rule. This is the conclusion reached in a study by Mariam Ujeyl et al. in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2012; 109[7]: 117-23).

Survivors of cancer in childhood have a higher risk of infertility in later life. This is the conclusion reached by Magdalena Balcerek and her co-authors in a study published in Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2012; 109[7] 126-31).

Pioneering work by a leading University of Nottingham scientist has helped reveal for the first time a vital process in the development of the early mammalian embryo.

A team led by Professor of Tissue Engineering, Kevin Shakesheff, has created a new device in the form of a soft polymer bowl which mimics the soft tissue of the mammalian uterus in which the embryo implants. The research has been published in the journal Nature Communications.